Recently, various and novel antibacterial agents or antibacterial products have been put on the marketplaces under the background that the infection by methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aures (MRSA) and an infectious Escherichia coli O-157 became social problems. Among them, there is a fiber blend product of a natural high molecular compound having many amino groups such as chitosan and cellulose fibers or its viscose-mixed product. However, their effectiveness is limited and their antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas auruginosa is not necessarily sufficient. In addition, a means to impart antibacterial property into cellulose has been conducted by impregnating into it a metallic antibacterial agent such as silver phosphoric acid zirconium or silver zeolite or fixing the metallic antibacterial agent on it with a binder. However, these have problem that washing repeatedly lowers the antibacterial property. Also, an organic chemical, for example 10, 10′-oxybisphenoxyarsine and 2-(4-thiazolyl)-benzimidazole are known to be used. The former has a problem of toxicity because it contains arsenic while the latter has a problem of being corrosive toward metals. Therefore, there has been desired antibacterial cellulose or its fiber having washing-resistance and high safety.
As a means to impart flame retardancy into cellulose or its fiber, it is known to enhance the nitrogen content. However, there is no one which still retains flame retarclancy even by washing repeatedly and therefore one having washing-resistance has been desired.
As a means to impart washing-resistance and flame retardancy into cellulose or its fiber, although one utilizing hydroxy methylolation reaction is known, there is a problem of generating formalin.
On the other hand, as a process for preparing a partial ester of a nitrogenous carboxylic acid with cellulose, the preparation of glycine ester and aminoenathic acid ester is described in the abstract of “Z. A. Rogovin et al; Vysokomolekulyarne Soedincniya 1, 157–61 (1959)”, the preparation of aminocaproic acid ester and amonoethic acid ester is described in the abstract of “Z. A. Rogovin et al; Periodica Polytech., 5, 65–87 (1961) and the preparation of glycine ester, alanine ester and aminocaproic acid ester is described in the abstract of “Z. A. Rogovin et al; Vysokomolekulyarne Soedincniya 3, 1027–30 (1961)”. Also, the preparation of p-aminobenzoic acid ester and glycine ester is described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. Hei 1-249801. However, in all the preparation processes the reaction is conducted in the presence of organic solvents such as dimthylsulfoxide, dimethylformamide and pyridine, and therefore explosion-proof type of production equipment is needed in the production and recovery equipment of the solvents is also needed. In considering many restrictions imposed on the equipment and an influence of the solvents on environment and so on, they are not necessarily industrially desirable. Any of these known literatures makes no reference about the usefulness of the products or the partial esters of nitrogenous carboxylic acid with cellulose.